Feds To Fund College Courses for Inmates

Second Chance Pell Grants Intended to Reduce Recidivism

More than 2,500 Texas inmates will participate in a national experiment starting next month, using federal money to take college courses.

For decades, the federal government has banned the use of Pell Grants funds for such rehabilitation efforts. But the Obama administration has launched the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program as a way to study whether reinstating Pell Grants for prisoners might boost their chances of finding employment. Nationwide, up to 12,000 inmates, all of whom are set for release within five years, will be eligible to earn a certificate, associate or bachelor's degree while incarcerated.

“Promoting the education and job training for incarcerated individuals makes communities safer by reducing recidivism and saves taxpayer dollars by lowering the direct and collateral costs of incarceration,” U.S. Secretary of Education John King Jr. said in a statement.

Texas provides some inmates access to education through the Windham School District. But steep budget cuts in 2011 by the Legislature forced the statewide prison education system to eliminate more than 250 full-time positions and reduce its program.

Three of the nine Texas schools participating in the national pilot — Mountain View College in Dallas, Southwest Texas Junior College in Uvalde and Wiley College in Marshall — will be offering prisonbased education for the first time.

The programs include a mixture of liberal arts and vocational training courses.

For Lee College's prison program in Huntsville, the pilot would build on a 50-year-old program offering certificates and associate degrees to offenders in the Texas prison system. The school currently teaches about 1,200 inmates, according to Donna Zuniga, dean of the college's Huntsville Center. Federal funding will allow enrollment to grow.

“I have absolute faith that this will reduce recidivism,” Zuniga said. “Ninety percent of them are going to get back in the community, and I would want, at least the ones around me, to be educated and have a chance to apply for jobs and get a livable wage so they don’t have to resort to crime.”

Cedar Valley College in Lancaster is using the federal aid to reestablish its prison education program. Ruben Johnson, executive dean of the college’s Business and Technology Division, said budget cuts at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice had forced the school to stop offering certificates and associate's degrees to inmates in 2012, after more than 10 years. Now, about 120 inmates from the Sanders
Estes Correctional Center in Venus are expected to enroll in its Air
Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology certificate program.

“It
will definitely ease the financial burden. It will also give [inmates]
some hope to enter the workforce, so they don’t have to go back to the
lifestyle they used to live,” said Johnson. He added that the state
should allocate funds to further expand rehabilitation programs.

A
2013 RAND Corporation study funded by the Department of Justice found
that inmates who participated in correctional education programs were 43
percent less likely to return to prison. Those inmates were also 13
percent more likely to have a job after finishing their sentence.

Texas,
which has the country's largest prison system with more than 150,000
inmates, pays an average $20,000 each year per inmate.

Congress
voted to ban prisoners from receiving Pell Grant funds in 1994 as part
of a broader crime bill signed by President Bill Clinton. At the time,
some critics argued that money spent to fund prison education was
unfairly reducing aid to traditional college students.

King,
the education secretary, said the pilot program costs less than 0.1
percent of the overall $30 billion annual budget that funds the Pell
Grant program for college students — about $30 million.

The
Second Chance Pell Pilot is part of the Obama administration's effort
in re-evaluating some longstanding barriers that prevent people with
criminal records from getting jobs and affordable housing. However, the
White House received some pushback from Republicans last summer, when
plans for the pilot were first announced.

“This
may be a worthwhile idea for some prisoners, but the administration
absolutely does not have the authority to do this without approval from
Congress,” U.S.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, said at the time.

Other conservatives charge that the pilot program is focusing on the right problem but with the wrong solution.

“It
shows that at least we're affirming that education should be a part of
rehabilitation,” said Derek Cohen, deputy director of the Center for
Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative
think tank.

“Are Pell Grants the right way to create the policy? I would say no.”

Rather
than restoring Pell, Cohen said Congress should pass proposed reforms
that would cut some sentences and ease re-entry after prison.

Zuniga,
who has been working with the Lee College program for 30 years, said
the value of educating prisoners can't be underestimated. There's no
more rewarding feeling than seeing her students entering the world of
work after completing a stint in prison, she said.

“If
you have ever been to one of our annual graduations, you would see
their families come, and maybe for the first time they have something to
stand up and clap about,” said Zuniga. The Texas Tribune is a
nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans — and
engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and
statewide issues.